Entourage creator attacks ‘wave of righteous PC culture’ after sexism claims against show

Doug Ellin said he would not make series ‘any more PC’ today

Entourage creator Doug Ellin has said he “tremendously resents” the backlash to his TV series.

The show, which aired for eight seasons from 2004 to 2011 and held up a mirror to the Hollywood boys club, revolved around movie star Vincent Chase (Adrian Grenier) as he chased women and navigated LA life with the help of his close friends and his agent, Ari Gold (Jeremy Piven).

Over the years, it has been criticised for its treatment of women, with many of its female characters depicted as disposable sexual pursuits whose main trait is being attractive. “Ari’s wife didn’t even have a name until the third-to-last episode of the series,” reported Screen Rant. (Her name is Melissa and she is played by Perrey Reeves.)

One Guardian critic wrote: “A swath of self-congratulatory celebs flash their smug mugs in a world so grotesquely chauvinistic you want Imperator Furiosa to arrive in a War Machine and nuke the place. Believe me, The Human Centipede was more sensitively attuned to issues of gender politics. And it had better jokes.”

In a new interview with Yahoo Entertainment, Ellin said the show’s legacy has suffered from a “wave of righteous PC culture”.

He said: “I’m proud of everything we did on Entourage, and I certainly don’t think it’s something that should be a lightning rod. It should be looked at for what it was.”

Ellin argued that Entourage was “extremely realistic” in depicting the Hollywood dynamics of its time. “I don’t think Entourage was this vulgar boyfest that people like to paint it as now,” he added. “When we came out, the New York Times said we were the smartest show on television!”

He suggested that, since the #MeToo movement, HBO has not been promoting Entourage on its platforms at the level of its other acclaimed series. “I resent it tremendously,” he said.

Ellin said “a character on TV should never be looked at as if they are the writer or the actor behind that person”, adding: “Nobody says that about The Sopranos, where they murder people… that maybe we should readdress whether murdering people on TV is OK.”

The showrunner called the backlash against Entourage an “overcorrection” but did acknowledge the importance of #MeToo. “There needs to be a reckoning and social injustices need to [be addressed] in certain ways,” he said. “Hopefully, we’ll get to a place where there’s equality for everybody, but there’s also room for people to create their art and not be judged so harshly.”

He said that if he rebooted the show, he would “not make it any more PC” but would write it in a “slightly kinder, gentler way because that’s the world we live in”.